1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications and, more particularly, to a method and system for allowing a user to select a quality of service and related cost of a facsimile or voice transmission at the time of transmittal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, facsimile machines are essential business communication tools that account for almost half of the traffic over an existing circuit switched network (e.g., public switched telephone network ("PSTN")) during peak busy hours. Unfortunately, heavy traffic in the network causes congestion, creating problems such as noisy or bad connections resulting in dropped calls between the originating or transmitting facsimile machine and the destination facsimile machine. In such cases, the originating facsimile machine will typically store the facsimile and attempt to transmit the facsimile several times until it is successful, resulting in extended sessions or, in some cases, multiple long distance toll calls. Although facsimiles may be delivered in real time over a low latency network such as the Internet, during times of congestion, it may be impossible to successfully transmit the facsimile in the times required by the facsimile protocols to deliver the facsimile in real time. Hence, many Internet based solutions may be based on, or fall back to, store and forward solutions. Furthermore, transmitting a facsimile during peak busy hours is far more costly than transmitting the facsimile during non-peak hours, such as late in the evening.
Currently, all facsimiles are sent via the same means and with the same priority. However, with the advent of private digital networks, much of the traffic over the existing network may be transferred to the digital networks to overcome the problems described above with respect to facsimile quality of service. Quality of service is related to both the quality of the transport and the timeliness of the facsimile. An example of an enhanced digital network is Enhanced Facsimile Service offered by AT&T where international conventional facsimile traffic is sent over separate international trunks which are closely monitored to maintain superior facsimile quality relative to standard PSTN traffic. An example of the use of a digital packet network is the AT&T EasyLink facsimile service, where facsimiles are accepted for delivery locally, and transmitted in a store and forward mode for later guaranteed delivery at a reduced cost over the PSTN facsimile.
Access to a digital packet network such as EasyLink Service is usually by the facsimile machine connecting to a local Point of Presence ("POP") for the selected digital network service provider. Through signaling via Dual Tone Multi-Frequency ("DTMF"), either manually or through the use of an automatic double dialer, the user provides an account number and a destination facsimile number. With Enhanced Facsimile Service, the user places an additional digit (e.g., "0") after a country code of the destination facsimile number to identify the service. The facsimile is transmitted at that time over the private network to the destination facsimile machine. The user is billed on a per minute basis for the time required to transmit the facsimile.
Currently, the use of existing circuit switched networks such as the PSTN provide low latencies required for a real time facsimile. Packet network delivery may be significantly less expensive due to the exemption from settlement and access fees, but cannot currently provide guarantees of low latencies that the PSTN provides. Furthermore, service providers may discount traffic delayed to off peak hours to encourage more efficient use of their networks. Thus, there exist multiple quality of services that are priced at corresponding rates. For example, a user in Japan may select AT&T Enhanced Fax to immediately deliver an important document to the United States that will be discussed as part of a phone call on that day, but at all other times the user only needs to deliver a facsimile overnight at a significantly reduced cost. Hence, a need exists to select the network and/or quality of service at the time of transmittal of each facsimile.